Startup Weekend Iowa City set to take place July 13-15

Do you have an idea you want to pursue or a problem you’d like to solve but don’t know where or how to start? Startup Weekend Iowa City just might be the place for you.

Set to take place this weekend, Startup Weekend is a 54-hour weekend event, during which entrepreneurs, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more pitch ideas for new startup companies, form teams around those ideas, and then deliver final presentations at the end of the weekend. Over the course of the weekend, teams will be challenged to create a prototype of their minimum viable product, that fits the needs of their target customer.

The event will start at 5:30 pm on the 13th. Participants will get up and pitch an idea for 60 seconds on Friday evening and try to form teams around their ideas. The top five or six teams then go on, work on their ideas all weekend, and at the end pitch their ideas for 5-6 minutes each.

Saturday will consist of teams conducting customer interviews and building out their prototypes. Participants will also have the opportunity to meet with mentors from noon to 3 pm on the 14th.

On Sunday, teams will present their final pitches at 4 pm. The final pitches will be free and open for anyone who would like to attend.

“In the past, people have had to pay $10 or $15 to get into that. We decided to scratch that and make this an open event for the community,” said Jay Cooper, organizer of Startup Weekend Iowa City. “We just hope that if you are going to come to that, you bring along a non-perishable food item for the Johnson County Crisis Center.”

The event will take place at MERGE in Iowa City. Tickets for the event are still available and can be purchased here.